OTTAWA POT CROP A BUST

Poor Quality Led to the Contracted Crop Being Burned.

OTTAWA -- The first batch of marijuana grown by a private company
under a Health Canada contract was useless for clinical trials and had
to be burned, Health Minister Anne McLellan said yesterday.

Prairie Plant Systems Inc. received a five-year, $5 million federal
contract to grow marijuana in an abandoned copper mine in Flin Flon,
Man., but McLellan said their first batch was not uniform.

Prairie Plant Systems was unable to receive a supply of standardized
marijuana seeds from the United States, McLellan said, so the company
turned to the RCMP, which supplied seeds seized in various raids.

"So there definitely wasn't any standardization of the product,"
McLellan said. "From the first harvest it was very clear -- my people
did the tests here -- that there were all sorts of marijuana. Plants
from different stocks with rates of THC, the active ingredient in
cannabis, that varied from plant to plant. All of it had to be burned."

Scientists have since been able to produce standardized seeds that
have led to a second, more uniform harvest in Flin Flon which will be
used for testing.

"That harvest is in the process of being checked," McLellan said. "It
will soon be available for clinical trials."

McLellan denied the perception she does not favour the use of
marijuana for medicinal purposes.

McLellan acknowledged the position of pro-marijuana activists, who
tout the plant's value as a relief for nausea caused by AIDS and
cancer treatments, among other uses.

But she said there is still no scientific proof of these
claims.

"In fact, we don't know enough," she said. "I asked my ministry to
examine all of the research. The conclusion was that there is very,
very little happening right now to determine the medical benefits
associated with marijuana use.